Virgin America is launching a series of Cyber Monday offerings for tech-forward travelers, including the chance to charter the company’s “Nerdbird.” The ultimate 'geek-chic' ride can be chartered to next year's 2013 International CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas Jan. 8-11. The airline is teaming up with Gilt City to offer a "nerdbird for hire" charter flight. One lucky purchaser will score the chance to travel to the 2013 CES with up to 135 of their friends or colleagues, onboard a new Virgin America Airbus A320 commercial jet appropriately named #nerdbird. As part of the deal, the purchaser gets the ability to custom brand the exterior of his or her ride for the month of CES. The airline is promoting the offer at http://www.giltcity.com/national/nerdbird. Images of a branded #nerdbird can also be found here. For those who don't wish to purchase an entire flight, the carrier also is offering a Cyber Monday fare sale, with an additional 10% off fares. The first 3000 who bought a ticket Nov. 26 received a gift with purchase: A free Gogo in-flight WiFi pass for their next flight. All of Virgin America's aircraft are outfitted with amenities like power outlets at every seat, touchscreen seatback entertainment platforms and WiFi. The airline is the only U.S. airline to offer in-flight WiFi on every plane in its fleet and was the first airline to launch Gogo's new next-generation higher-bandwidth ATG4 WiFi as of this fall. The company gets inquiries every year from local tech companies and entrepreneurs asking to charter aircraft to head to CES, said Luanne Calvert, vice president of marketing at Virgin America. “So we thought it would be fun to answer the call and work with Gilt City to create the ultimate geek gift," Calvert said in a release. "Plus, if being the first airline to offer fleetwide WiFi and having an entertainment platform that runs off LINUX isn't evidence enough, we're kind of geeks ourselves." This is not the first time that Virgin America and Gilt City have teamed up to offer unique rewards and packages for savvy travelers. Virgin America worked with Gilt City in 2011 to offer a charter jet for hire on Cyber Monday. The offer sold in seconds.
As part of its renewed Hispanic marketing efforts under its new “Viva Hoy” platform, Pepsi is one key sponsor of an Alejandro Sanz concert to be live-streamed internationally on Dec. 6 by Terra Live Music. The event will mark the first time that Pepsi’s U.S. Hispanic and Latin American marketing teams have worked together on a cross-border initiative, Javier Farfan, senior director of cultural branding for Pepsi, tells Marketing Daily. It also marks the first time that Pepsi as a whole has sponsored a live performance across borders. Although the U.S. Hispanic and Latin American markets are Pepsi’s key targets for the sponsorship, the concert will be broadcast live in the 19 countries reached by the Terra digital media company’s entertainment, lifestyle, sports and news content, including Spain and other European countries, notes Terra’s U.S. CEO, Fernando Rodriguez. (In total, Terra says it reaches a monthly audience of 100 million.) Like other Terra content, the HD concert will be offered in English, Spanish and/or Portugese, and viewable across multiple screens/devices, including PCs, tablets, smartphones, smart TVs and DOOH screens -- and will offer viewers a variety of social and other channels through which to interact and share about the event. The event, the first time an Alejandro Sanz concert has been live-streamed, is also being sponsored by American Family Insurance, Kia and T-Mobile. Bestselling Latin music artist Sanz is among the most influential Hispanic social media influencers, with some 7.7 million Twitter followers and nearly 2.4 million Facebook fans, currently. The concert’s mobile reach was particularly important to Pepsi, because U.S. Hispanic and Latin American consumers are particularly avid users of mobile devices, says Farfan. (Terra reports that about 20% to 30% of its audience connects with its content through mobile.) Pepsi is promoting the live-streamed concert on its Spanish- and English-language site, MiPepsi, as well as MiPepsi’s Facebook and Twitter presences, reports Farfan. In addition, Pepsi is running a sweepstakes in 12 Latin American countries (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Ecuador) offering a grand prize of a VIP trip package for two to attend the live Sanz concert in Miami and meet the singer/songwriter. To enter, consumers send a tweet to @TerraMusicaUS explaining why they want to see Sanz live, using the hashtag #DondeHayPepsiHayMúsica. (See accompanying graphic.) For Pepsi, the concert sponsorship is an important step in extending its renewed Hispanic marketing focus beyond the U.S., to Latin America in particular, says Farfan. Pepsi’s “Viva Hoy” platform -- a translation of the overall brand’s new “Live for Now” marketing platform -- reflects Latinos’ higher-than-average consumption of carbonated soft drinks, as well as Hispanic population growth trends. Pepsi was among Advertising Age’s top 50 Advertisers in Hispanic Media from 2004 (when it was #6, with $68.5 million in spending) to 2007 (#27), but it dropped off that list thereafter. This past July, Pepsi kicked off its multiplatform “Viva Hoy” initiatives with -- among other efforts -- a TV spot featuring Argentine soccer player Lionel Messi, aired on both general media and Hispanic networks. The Sanz concert sponsorship is also representative of the digital initiatives that will be key in Pepsi’s overall, global, multicultural “Live for Now” marketing approach going forward, notes Cesar Sroka, group account director for OMD, which is part of a cross-agency, multi-disciplinary team of Omnicom agencies working on the “Live for Now” global campaign.
Subaru is growing fast. The brand has seen 78% growth in sales over the past four years, and has over a million fans on Facebook. The company, which has focused strategy on social media, in recent years built a strong brand identity around a theme -- love -- that at first glance seems absurdly vague and sentimental, especially in a sector that sells expensive, engineering-driven things like cars. Love? Maybe for Chanel, but for cars? Yet, it works, says Michael McHale, who heads both corporate communications and social media at the Cherry Hill, N.J., company. After all, he says, owners say that's how they feel about Subaru. At a recent meeting of the International Motor Press Association, he gave a history lesson and explained how the campaign, "Share the Love," has put wind in the sails -- and sales -- of a once-stagnant brand. McHale recounts how the company, on deathwatch in the ’90's, pulled itself out of the ICU with Forrester, Outback, and Legacy, but hit a ceiling because it lacked brand identity. "Driven by What's Inside," launched in 2008, didn't help. "It was too subtle and clever," said McHale. The problem: survey respondents said they had no opinion of Subaru. "They said 'it's not for me,' and that Subaru wasn't relevant to them." But owners "saw us as ready for anything, and progressive, and adventurous. And unless the heart's engaged, you aren't going to buy." Research also showed that the Subaru owner base is three times more likely to hike and bike, three times more likely to be cause-oriented, volunteer-oriented and 3.5 times more likely to own a pet. Which, he said, led to the new, highly emotional brand positioning that also tried to promote Subaru as virtuous and transparent. Ads have real owners talking about their cars, and focus on the brand sponsorship of things like the ASPCA, a rally and performance team, the Geological Society of America, and the science-education foundation AAAS. The brand also tends to eschew traditional marketing tactics and sports. Instead of the Super Bowl, Subaru did a "puppy bowl." It prefers to sponsor things like PBS' "Antique Road Show," and markets around South by Southwest, the Cherry Blossom Festival in Philadelphia, and fall festivals at organic farms, per McHale. He said Subaru's social strategy on places like Foursquare, Facebook, and Pinterest is to engage influencers, podcasters, commentators, opinion leaders, citizen journalists, social-media mavens, bloggers, and forum gurus. The latest effort was the fifth iteration of "Share the Love" on Facebook, where users could vote to select two charities to join a roster of three organizations -- the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Make-A-Wish, and the Meals on Wheels Association of America -- that Subaru sponsors. In a yearly fourth-quarter program, Subaru donates $250, up to a total of $5 million, for every new Subaru vehicle sold or leased. "Instead of advertising, we try to provide valuable content."
Barnes & Noble brings the holiday wish list into the modern age via a new television commercial that shows off the “Catalog” and “Scrapbooking” features (which enable people to save and organize images in one place to easily share with others) of its Nook HD and HD-plus tablets. The television commercial, which will begin running this week, shows a mother and her daughter perusing electronic catalogs on their Nook HD. When the mother leaves, the girl continues, saving different pages and images in a single file that she calls “Dear Santa.” After she completes her list, she leaves the Nook in the family’s mailbox addressed to the North Pole as a way of sharing her wish list with Santa. “If you think about the way people –- especially women -- shop catalogs, all the stuff they collect and the mountains of paper that can be organized, it’s a whole new world for people to go through catalogs and collect imagery,” Glenn Kaplan, creative director at Barnes & Noble, tells Marketing Daily, adding that the feature is much like Pinterest in its manner of visually organizing information for recall at a later time. “It’s absolutely a very similar mindset, and it resonates brilliantly with what people are doing on Pinterest. This is the way people are discovering content, organizing their content and sharing their content.” Along with “Share” -- a pre-Black Friday television commercial that showed a family passing a Nook among each other with different user profiles set up for each member -- the new commercial (which will run in concert with “Share”) is meant to position the Nook HD and HD-plus as the “ideal tablet for families,” Kaplan says. “With ‘Share,’ we’re saying that with profiles, everyone gets to have their own unique device,” he says. “The scrapbooking, which is a unique build in feature for Nook HD and HD-plus, solves a lot of problems and creates a lot of value for families.” Since first creating advertising for the Nook in April 2011 (when it was positioned as the ultimate e-reader), Barnes & Noble has subtly evolved the product to show off more tablet features. That evolution, however, does not mean the Nook has lost sight of its primary purpose or core audience, Kaplan says. “Our strong suit and our mission is reading, but the world of tablets affords a wider array of choices,” Kaplan says. “Our way into the world of multimedia is through people’s interest in reading.” Both “Share” and the “Dear Santa” commercial, which were created by advertising agency Mullen and directed by Todd Field of Smuggler, will run throughout the holidays on broadcast and cable networks, on programming such as “The Voice,” “X-Factor,” “Dancing with the Stars,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “The Mindy Project,” “The Good Wife,” “Survivor,” “Nashville,” and several others. The company estimates the commercials will receive 1.2 billion impressions nationally throughout the campaign. Not surprisingly, the “Dear Santa” spot will also run in digital channels that also appeal to heavy Pinterest users.
People just want to feel the burn. And marketers do, too. The booming popularity of pain-inducing endurance sports is driving growth in marketing spend to support it. According to research from Chicago-based IEG, a sponsorship firm and unit of WPP's GroupM, North American sponsorship spending on marathons, triathlons and the like will hit $102.1 million this year, up 6.7% from $95.7 million in 2011. That bests the IEG’s prediction of 4.1% for the overall sponsorship industry and 6.4% for the sports category in general. The reasons, according to IEG: there are more people getting into hitting the wall, a rising interest in health and the affluent spectator demo. Sponsors are doing a range of activations, involving six-figure spending down to smaller backing of grassroots events. Some do both. Nissan has been a consistent sponsor both of major endurance events with global appeal, such as the Amgen Tour of California, of which its 2013 Altima was official vehicle this year, and in which raced a pro-cycling team it co-sponsors with Radio Shack. The automaker, which has been a multi-year sponsor of that race, also backs the ING New York City marathon along with brands like Timex. Nissan also gets behind local amateur cycling and running events tied to its "Master the Shift" platform with partner Rodale Press. IEG also points to Allstate Corp. and the Allstate Life Insurance 13.1 Marathon Series; HumanaVitality, LLC and the Kentucky Derby Marathon; and PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. and the Rock ’n’ Roll Philadelphia Half Marathon. The consultancy also points to the horizontal expansion of endurance sports, such as the advent and growth in popularity of such extreme events as the global Spartan Race series. There are also races like The Original Mud Run, which has about 15 sponsors including the U.S. Air Force and Motorola; the Dirty Girl national series, which has three national (Trek, Body Basix and Stark Brothers) and 22 regional sponsors; and Color Run 5K events, of which Chevrolet's Spark sub-compact is the official car. There's even a zombie-themed event, "Run For Your Lives," which comprises around 20 races nationwide and of which Subaru and the American Red Cross (appropriately) are sponsors. William Chipps, senior editor of the IEG Sponsorship Report, tells Marketing Daily that desirability for sponsors isn't necessarily dependent on how traditional it is. "It's the size of the event, how well it's run even if it's new and unique." He adds that overall participation drives the demographic. "Spectators are the icing on the cake; the participants are loyal, and passionate."
Early indications are that Cyber Monday sales will be as strong as retailers have been hoping, as consumers continue to blur the lines between on- and offline shopping. By 3 p.m., IBM Benchmark reported that online sales are up 25.6% over last year. Even more remarkable than those gains, experts say, is the fluidity with which consumers are now able to shift focus from online to brick-and-mortar shopping: comScore reports that for the first time, online sales on Black Friday -- the day usually associated with madness and mayhem in physical stores -- broke the $1 billion mark. And many retailers are hawking “cyber” specials in their brick-and-mortar stores. Think of it as CyberFridayBlackMonday week, Fiona Dias, chief strategy officer of ShopRunner, tells Marketing Daily. “Cyber Monday has really ceased to be a day in the calendar, it’s more like a week or two,” she says. “Because stores are so linked to their Web sites, they have to bring those Cyber Monday events into their physical stores as well.” What’s more, she says, that Cyber Monday consciousness has become so big and all-encompassing “that every other industry is gate-crashing. I’m seeing emails for Cyber Monday specials on travel sites, from hotels, even a concert hall in Philadelphia offering to waive services in 'Today only’ deals.” Shop.org, the online arm of the National Retail Federation, says it expects 129.2 million Americans to have spent time shopping online -- up from the 122.8 million last year. That includes 20.4 million who are shopping vie smartphone or tablet, an increase of 14.4%. (The IBM sample shows a much higher percentage of shop-by-phoners, with 21% of that group using their mobile device.) Still, the vast majority (88%, says Shop.org) cybershop the old-fashioned way, using a computer while at home. But 12.4%, or roughly 16 million, also said they planned to shop from their computer at work. And retailers have been holding out rewards for those who do so: The trade group says 85% of the retailers it surveyed are offering a promotion just for Cyber Monday.
Apparently, the only thing that people agree on in this divided country is that they won’t click on ads. Click-through rates for standard banner advertisements are appallingly low, reaching only .08%. That means for every thousand ads served, we should expect LESS than one click. Adding rich media -- once considered the savior for display -- increases response slightly, to .14%. Considering that this is the format on which we have essentially built our industry, one fact has become glaringly obvious: display advertising is broken. Since 2007, industry media and experts like Jakob Nielsen have been waving a flag, warning us about Banner Blindness. For more than 5 years, we’ve known there were cracks in the foundation of the house we were building, and yet we continued to build. In 2010, it was reported that 43% of consumers ignore online display ads. Sure, we’re in the process of adopting new standards, but while those may help improve the performance of online display ads, we’re still working upon that same foundation -- a foundation we know is crumbling. Why would consumers ignore the ads that we have worked so hard to create and place? “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” We in the industry -- publishers, marketers, advertisers and media buyers alike -- are the ones to blame, for:
Today, many big brands and small businesses alike are leveraging content marketing to build and optimize their Web presence. This often means managing and publishing content across multiple platforms, including your Web site, business blog, and social media accounts, which can result in mistakes that can be harmful to your business. Here are four content marketing snafus you may run into this holiday season and four tips to help your business avoid them. 1. Using copyrighted images When it comes to your business’ Web presence, it is critical to produce unique, sharable content to increase engagement with your customers and prospects. But one huge mistake that many businesses make is posting copyrighted images. If you’re searching on Google and copying the images that show up in the search results, you may be using an unlicensed image on your public pages, which can result in legal action if you fail to remove the images or pay for their use. How to avoid it: To be sure the images you post on your Web site, blog, or other pages are legitimate, you can source them from a stock photography site like iStockphoto, take your own photos, or find images online that have a Creative Commons license. 2. Not claiming all your social profiles As a local business, one critical mistake you could make is neglecting to claim all your profiles on social media or directories -- or worse, not checking to see if they are already claimed by someone else. For instance, when Netflix launched its DVD-by-mail service Qwikster last year, it failed to check the @qwikster Twitter account, which was already owned by someone else whose tweets were less than professional. How to avoid it: If you are starting out with a new business, it’s vital to not only decide on a Web site domain name, but also to verify that the social profiles you want on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ are available. Claim these as soon as possible before a competitor or other entity snatches them up. 3. Tweeting from the wrong account In order to keep your professional accounts professional, be extremely cautious to make sure everything you post is an accurate representation of your brand. It is very easy to make a mistake like posting a personal update to a site like Facebook or Twitter -- just ask the Red Cross or Chrysler, two brands that have experienced the accidental tweet. How to avoid it: First, make sure that you have a strategy in place to monitor and manage your social media profiles. If you manage a personal and a corporate Twitter accounts, use two different applications on your desktop and mobile device to avoid mistakes. You could also take advantage a Web marketing service that monitors your social media profiles and publishes content and social updates on your behalf. If a rogue tweet or post does surface, delete the post and apologize for the gaffe as quickly as possible to save face with your fans and followers, and make sure you have a social media policy in place for handling any such occurrences with your staff. 4. Newsjacking a sensitive topic Many brands recently have come under fire for what is referred to as “newsjacking,” or using a popular or trending topic to promote their brand, product, or service. For instance, this week alone, big brands like Gap and American Apparel have been called out on social media sites for posting insensitive tweets that used Hurricane Sandy to advertise sales. How to avoid it: Before you attempt to capitalize on a catastrophic event, think about the potential backfire it could cause with not only consumers, but also the entire online community. If in doubt, it’s best not to post anything at all. What major content marketing or social media mistakes have you seen from your favorite brands or local businesses? Let us know in a comment.